UCSD’s Rady School develops high-tech leaders

As the United States economy was recovering from recession in the 1990s, San Diego scientists and technologists were advancing discoveries from the laboratory to the marketplace. These discoveries forged the path for San Diego’s economic renewal and the seeds for an entrepreneurial economy.

Bill Otterson, then director of UCSD CONNECT, inspired and supported the fledgling entrepreneurial community. With Otterson’s guidance, the San Diego entrepreneurial community quickly grew. Witnessing this growth, several prominent business leaders recognized the long-term impact high technology industries could have on our local economy. These leaders held a series of meetings to discuss what was needed to realize this potential and make San Diego a high technology business destination.

San Diego had the scientists that produced the discoveries and technologies to sustain this new economy, but lacked the base of people who were trained at the same level in business as they were in science. Educated at premier research institutions such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford and UC San Diego, researchers interested in business education left San Diego to pursue their MBAs at equally prestigious business schools. Once they developed networks at business schools outside San Diego, most of these entrepreneurs did not return to our city. A plethora of discoveries and new technologies were developed in San Diego, but without business leaders to guide the resulting new companies, their economic potential eluded our community.

The business leaders decided that the solution to address San Diego’s technology business leadership void was to found a first-rate business school at the region’s foremost research university, UC San Diego. The solution was realized in 2003 with the founding of the Rady School of Management, and the recruitment of Robert Sullivan from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to be founding dean and the architect of a new type of graduate business school. Our vision was that this premier business school would be designed with a dynamic curriculum that would provide scientists and technologists with the unique skills and knowledge required to lead high-technology, innovative companies.

In less than a decade, the Rady School of Management has exceeded our expectations. The recent announcement that the school has earned the prestigious initial accreditation from AACSB International – the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business indicates the school has reached the highest achievement in management education.

As the founding supporters of the Rady School of Management, we attribute its incredible success to the school’s visionary leadership. The deft execution of our vision has attracted faculty from top-tier universities such as the University of Chicago, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and the Wharton School. Technologists and scientists no longer need to leave San Diego to obtain a world-class business education, and San Diego is developing the leaders necessary to ensure the future of its entrepreneurial economy.

We remain deeply involved with the Rady School and its students. As we envisioned, many of San Diego’s scientists and technologists enroll in the Rady School’s MBA programs. After graduation, a majority of Rady alumni stay in the San Diego area and go on to start new companies or become intrapreneurs within large organizations, such as Qualcomm, Illumina and Hewlett-Packard. To provide the local business community with much needed business resources, the Rady School curriculum encourages students during their years at Rady to work with San Diego businesses, organizations and fledgling entrepreneurs.

When visiting the school and speaking with students, we are extremely impressed with the quality of support these students provide to the business community. Recently, the San Diego Zoo asked a group of students to develop a marketing strategy for a web-based animal training program. Another team of Rady students performed an extensive study for a cloud storage entrepreneur, analyzing how the entrepreneur could take a product to market. Students also created a business plan for a local company to assess potential micro grids in California, addressing military, university and commercial markets. Such student activities are an essential component to the experience-based MBA curriculum as well as service to our community.

With the news that the Rady School has achieved the highest level of accreditation, we reflect back on those initial discussions about the future of San Diego’s economy. In short order our decision to cultivate and invest in a new breed of business school that would serve our emerging science and technology industries has paid large dividends to our community. The Rady School is clearly positioned to be ranked as a top business school nationally and to continue to accelerate San Diego’s economic prosperity. We believe that the best is yet to come.

Technologists and scientists no longer need to leave San Diego to obtain a world-class business education, and San Diego is developing the leaders necessary to ensure the future of its entrepreneurial economy.

Atkinson is a former UCSD chancellor and UC president, Jacobs is co-founder of Qualcomm, Stensrud is a longtime venture capitalist, Dennis is co-founder of Pacific Communication Sciences.